Baltimore City Public Schools Fine Arts

| High School Archive- Media-Arts, High School-Media Arts, Media Arts, Middle School-Media Arts, Middle-School-Archive-Media-Arts

Our hoodie design project is special because it increased Khai’lee’s communication in art class. Why? Using the digital illustration platform Sketch.io offered him more agency by offering him more graphics choices. He smiled more and tracked sticker options because they also looked like his favorite visual style–Nintendo characters. With more digital options and choices, he’s very attentive. His mother engages him a lot in having him pick out his fashion choices and he has a Nintendo slipper collection.

Consider how mark-making can be extended to digital stickers and graphics choices. When Khai’lee sees a design he likes, he smiles, makes eye contact, blinks, and turns his head to track it. Alternately, if he doesn’t like a design, he’ll frown.

Many students with special needs are drawn to YouTube and TikTok videos, Instagram Stories, and cartoons for leisure and family socialization, so empower them as curators! Social media influencers curate their feed with pictures they like, so educators can secure school social media Padlets vision boards to house files for t-shirt templates, bags, or even video editing software! Photo and graphics curation have so many options for choice-making, media literacy, communication, and agency building for students with special needs. When we plan not just for the classroom but engage with the community as an audience, it reinforces community-assisted daily living skills from a place of leadership.

Photo Above: When Khai’lee Sampson is not busy saving the world, he is designing apparel!


Read more about Khai’lee’s style process below:

Where is a different place you would like to put your design?

Pants and Shoes
What fashion staple do you like more?

Jeans fleece pants 
Which Nintendo character do you like more?

Mario Yoshi
Where is your favorite store?

Polo Store
If you could star in a Marvel Universe movie, who would you be?

Black Panther and Captain America
A special thank you to Khai’lee Sampson’s mom for helping us to conduct this interview!